Cheaper YouTube Premium Lite Ad-Free Viewing Experience Enters Trial Phase
YouTube is home to over 2 billion monthly active users, who collective peruse 1 billion videos each day. It's a massive streaming service. There is also a Premium tier that costs $11.99/€11.99 per month, but for people who want to get rid of ads without paying full price, Google may launch a Premium Lite tier soon.
As it stands right now, a YouTube Premium Lite trial is taking place in Europe. The trial is available to people in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden. The Premium Lite tier runs €6.99 (and will likely be $6.99 in the US when/if it arrives) and trades a few features for a lower price tag.
Namely, the Premium Lite tier does not come with YouTube Music (previously Google Play Music). So if you are already getting your streaming music needs from Spotify, Apple Music, or wherever else, YouTube Premium Lite is a cheaper way to get rid of ads without having another music service forced upon you.
The Premium Lite tier also lacks offline downloads (a feature also available to YouTube TV subscribers) and the ability to have YouTube videos play in the background when switching over to another app. Otherwise, it still supports viewing videos on a variety of platforms, including in the browser, on Android and iOS devices, on smart TVs, and on dedicated game consoles.
"In Nordics and Benelux (except for Iceland), we’re testing a new offering to give users even more choice: Premium Lite costs €6.99/month (or local equivalent per month) and it includes ad-free videos on YouTube," a YouTube spokesperson told The Verge.
There is already a landing page for the discounted YouTube Premium Lite tier, though you can only subscribe if you live in a territory where it is currently being tested. It's not clear when the cheaper tier when roll out to more areas.
It will be interesting to see how many people jump on board, once it's more broadly available. As it stands, YouTube Premium boasts 30 million paying subscribers. Some of those would inevitably convert to Premium Lite if/when it launches, but the expectation is that Google would more than make it for it by attracting new subscribers.
